Female engineer fights back after she's slammed for being "too pretty" for the job

A 22-year-old software engineer is fighting back after being tagged too pretty to be in that field. Isis Anchalee Wenger appeared in an ad for her San-Francisco based company, OneLogin, but people didn't believe she was 'real.'

Wenger, a self-taught full-stack engineer who calls herself a 'genuine introvert' and 'science nerd.' appeared on a OneLogin ad that was plastered at the BART and MUNI stations at Embarcadero in San Francisco, the backlash began

One person wrote about the ad on Facebook:

 'This is some weird haphazard branding. I think they want to appeal to women, but are probably just appealing to dudes. Perhaps that’s the intention all along. But I’m curious [if] people with brains find this quote remotely plausible [and] if women in particular buy this image of what a female software engineer looks like.'Only that was what a female software engineer looked like, because Wenger is a real software engineer.

Another person thought she appeared too 'sexy,' writing:

 'If their intention is to attract more women then it would have been a better to choose a picture with a warm, friendly smile rather than a sexy smirk.'

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Wenger told TechCrunch.

'External appearances and the number of X chromosomes a person has is hardly a measure of engineering ability,' 'My goal is to help redefine 'what an engineer should look like' because I think that is a step towards eliminating subconscious bias towards diversity in tech.'

'I’ve had men throw dollar bills at me in a professional office (by an employee who works at that company, during work hours).
I’ve had an engineer on salary at a bootcamp message me to explicitly 'be friends with benefits' while I was in the interview process at the school he worked for.' 

 To correct the misconception that engineers all have to be nerdy-looking , Wenger has started a campaign to show the world what they really look like.

Participants can upload their photos to Twitter with the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer.

Even Bill Gates' wife, Melinda, has weighted in, tweeting: '#ILookLikeAnEngineer is rightfully challenging the face of engineering.


Culled from Tech Crunch